320 ENGLAND eckett as well as of Bacon, but more especially of Bacon because despair has « particular force in a body of images where the only acts fof love are between males, are therefore acts which partake of a tragic finality. G&G 's art acknowledges ths disaster bur 2t the same rine rants the consolation that through deep parmership our soltae can De repaired, AMERICA Newman =I gts Thiswas rit in apSéundr the le "The Ut Duckling for ahora? Exproconion. The Cntal Decelopmons,orgenised by Michas| Auping, de catalogue of exhibit the bight Knox Art lr, Bi, from 1g September to 39 November ofr. Kewes public! with umes ci torial changes over whic thete wasn onsutatin The rpms made from mc ofthe eye the original ypescrgt with von recent revions of my ow Newnan was bern in Jansary 1905; his earliest recorded drawing dates from 1944, his cariest eccordel punting from 1045; the paint ing in which by his own reckoning be found hinmselt. Onement I dates from January to48; the paintings in wich his art reaches! ity fullest rmacunay, Phe Vac, Vay Hevousas Sublin and Catbedr, trom £950 to 1951. That is to say, he was forty when he produced his first known printing, around forty-five when he produced what seem the most indispensable paintings of this half of che cwentieth cent Newman, then ~ given the resemblance of amiss, not t moun taineers, with their finite ambition to scale particular peaks, but (0 jumpers and vaulters, with their infinite ambition to reach as for as ‘they can (and their recognition that, whatever their suecess by’ com parison with others, they are hound to fall short in the end) ~ ‘Neveman was like those champiem bigh-jumpers who delay coming ‘nto a competition jill Ue bar is nearing its ultimate level “is greatness was frst manifest in some of the 1944 series black and-whire brush and ink drawings with rips, beams pr dises,* but no printing done before roq9 prepares us for the achievement during that year of Concord, Covenant, Abraham, Yella Parting and Be I~322. AMERICANS prepares us fr either their mastery or their variety, As Athena sprang. fally armed from the brow of Zeus, s0 Newman the aris sprang fully armed from the brow of Newman the dreamer. Such sudden reali tion following prolonged medication is not an occidental pattern of Peshaps the resemblance to Zen art of some of those 1946 ‘brush and ink drawings is more than skin deep. ‘Newman, of course, did more dhan meditate during his years of preparation; he wrate, He wrote, it appears, in onder to define for himelf what had to be done. ‘The foremost imperative was the need “The purpose of man’s first speech’, he 1947, was an adress to the unknowable”? And the follow= ing year: “we ae reassering man’s natural desire for the exalted, fora concern with our relationship to the absolute emotions’ The next behav imperative was the nced to be revolutionary, resolutely and ‘unashamnaly so: Tt can now be sen that the art critics who maligned Céeanne during his lifetime had a better understanding of the revol uonaty implications of his art than his English and American defenders wh hailed him asthe father of modern arton the grounds that he was the great proponent of the art of Poussin.’ The srength ‘of modern at, is establishment of a basis for a continued creative- ness, ay Sin its revolutionary differences, in its rad “modernist” “tradition” that have been read into it by its apologists Inthe search for the absolute and commitment to the nes, it was advantageous not to be a European, not to be steeped ina tired eul- ‘ure: I believe thac here in America, some of us ree fom che weight fof European culture . are creating innages whose reality is self which are devoid of the props and crutches that evoke asociations wich outmoded images, both sublime and beautiful. We are trecing ourselves of the impediments of memory, association, ‘nostalgia, legend, myth, or what have you, that have been the devices ‘of Western European painting. Instead of making ‘cathedrals’ out of ‘Christ; man, or Tie’, weare making it out of ourselves, out of our own, feclings’® ‘That was truly prophesie rll, all of dreams that chen come true. ‘Newman did not say so, but it may have helped co he a Jew as well as on American for painting was one of the delights of European culture NEWMAN 1 323 from which the Jews had cut themselves off so that, when he picked ‘upa paintbrush, the Jest, fr more even than the American, was doing something uncorrupted by the boredom of ancestral habit. ‘But then Newman himself, atthe time he was making those state~ ‘ments, had done little enough with his painthrash. He simply had a ‘compelling sense that something had to be done which was different fiom what artist in his culture had been doing, had an abstract inta- ition of what needed tobe done, hac an intiner that certain friends of his were doing something relevint, had an awareness of what he must actually do that was as vague as his awareness of what he was exace ‘Not space cutting nor space building, not construction nor fauvist destruction; not the pure line, straight and narrow, nor the rortured line, distorted and humiliating; not the accurate eye, all fingers, nor the wild eye of dream, winking; but che idea-complex that makes con- tact with mystery of lif, of men, of nature, ofthe hard, black chaos that is death, or the grayer softer chac thac is tragedy.” Artists in that sort of situation, of knowing what cheir direction but not what their vehicle isto be, have traditionally found solutions with the help of art from remote times or places — Japanese prints, Byzantine mosuics, Aftican carvings, Isamic testles and 30 forth Newman wrote about pre-Columbian sculpture, Oceanic art, Nonhwest Coast painting, but these did litle or nothing to form his style, Whar does seem by common consent to have helped ro da so was work by two living Furopean artis, figurative artists: paintings by Matisse such as the Piaw Lesen of 1916 and Red Stadio of 1911, acquired by the Museum of Modem Art, New York, in 1046 and 1049 respectively, and the Barbers by 4 Ricer, completed in 1917, which was ‘ethibited in New York during the Fortis and tho stending female figures of Giacomett, which made thei frst public appearance in a ‘one-man show atthe Pierre Matisse Gallery, New York, which opened fon 29 January 1948, cen days before Newman painted Onemont I (oe his birthday) ~ and, if he hadn't seen the show by then, he would cer- tainly have seen the catalogue. Hess discusses the resemblance 0 those Figures of the ‘cough hand-brused character’ ofthe vertical in that paintings' and Sandler is clearly evoking them when he writes th "Newman's stripes ‘can also be perceived as igure, ravaged by space’ ast not do324. AMERICANS I was not so much ironic as appropriate that Newman, while writing thet “here in America, some of us, free from the weight of Furopean culture, are finding the answer’, found his answer with the aid of European artists as steeped in European culture as Matisse an GGiacomet: The point i that it was they who hua! had to deal with ‘the ‘weight of European culture’ and that it was because Newman was free ‘of chat weight that he could deal with Matisse and Giacomett and go ‘on fram there. ‘This, of course, was shelly characteristic of the Astract Expressionist, who suddenly gave America is leadership of ‘world art by seizing opportunitics presented by an elaborate configu ration of cultural, political and economic circumstances to achieve happy and glorious marriages between American innocence and uropean experience. In the famous photograph of The Irascibles! published in Life maga- zine om 15 January 1951 Newman is seated atthe very centre of the group. This could well have been for con reasons: the three most richly mustachiood mea present are made to form a central isenccles triangle in which the brigand-hke figures of Stamos and Rothko are on the Hanks while dhe colonel-ike figure of Newman is a the apex, while the two bakiest men, Newman and Pell are placed one justin front of the other s0 that their domes hold the entre ofthe stage. Anather, es likely, posible reason for Newmans position was that he was che neophyte of the group, having had his first one-man shox only months before, whereas all the others were seasoned exhibitors; another was chat his published writings had given him the role of the group's spokesman or guns or Fool. One thing is certains he was not putin the eentze because he was thought to have 2 central position as an artist. Asan artist he was deemed by his pecrs Pollock apart ~to be s dud We tend to fatter ourselves char we are altogether better talent spotters than our predecessors were in the days ofthe Impressionists and the Cubists~ of even as late as the royes, when Mondrian died hungry, Yet Newman, who since the mid-1y60s has come tobe widely thought of as the greatest painter to have emerged since the Second World W 1osos. For instance, as ate as 1950 4 book as intelligent and informed was generally ridiculed or ignored until the end of the NEWMAN ~ and broad in its sympathies as Sam Hunter's Modern Ameriaan Patating and Sculpture’ could have 4 chapser about Abstract Expressionist painting entitled ‘Search for the Absolute’ which did not include Newman among the fourteen exponents it mentioned, A discussion of events in the year 1950 ~ when Newman had his first ‘one-man show ~ coneluded: ‘With Phikip Guston’s show of the same year, Kline's exhibition announced the lst significant new extension ff the radical abstract styles of the decade.’ And the whole chapter ended: ‘The puincings of Pollock and De Kooning om the one hand, and Rothko and Stil on the other, continue t define the antipodes of the most vital American painting" (Besides getting the future wrong through ignoring Newman's key position, chat statcrnent incilentally got the past wrong as well in the way it coupled Pollock and dde Kooning. Ifthe stylistic range of Abstract Expressionism is taken tw cover an arc of 180°, then the relative average positions ofits lead ing exponents might be something lke this: de Kooning, 0°; Gorky, 40% Pollock, 75% Stil, 120°; Rothko, 133°; Newman, 180°, I do not now where to put Kline.) The rejection of Newman was, of course, the traditional fate of “The Ugly Duckling, the character who appears an the scene when a member ofa different species is expected. His role in the context of the Abstract Expressionist is similar wo Cévanne’s i he context of the Impressionists: to create a more rigorous idiom than that of his comrades while remaining involved in their kind of subject-matter, ‘But Cézanne’s art, while rejected by the world at large, was enor mously admired by the artists who were close to hrm. “One thing that Lam involved in about painting’, Newnan oll me, is that che painting should give man a sense of place: that he knosrs he’s there, so he’s aware of himself. In that sense he relates to me when 1 sma the painting because in that sense I was there, And one of the nicest things that anybody ever said about my work is when you your~ selF said that standing in font of my paintings you had a scnse of your own scale. Thisis what | think you meant, and thisis what Lhave tried to do, That the onlooker in front of my painting knows that he's there, To me, the sense of place has not only a mystery but has that sense of metaphysical face. Ihave come ro distrust the epsodie, and I326 AMERICANS hope hat my siting has the impact fgg vmcone at id me, the fing of hi on tay, of his om seprstenest, of hit ow indvteay, and atthe se tine of his conection to others, who ite ao sepante* "The incendon sounds bat, meals. In fei eee cap tines eg tral aie ore race tmarcrperced tek Meta erst ap Path» Garg) (60), ‘The panty’ vibration akeratsbeorecn ts holding nein a soll rescatend epee yes hain afew te ‘hegues bern dnd we fir were racing out eB aly tdrancng wards sno enuing i immocuey to th fame cer becomes tre denen hough anon of he tpue in foto ape the compres oleae pervaing te whole fast ee ee ae plete g trip can po through us fom oar own scalp down at ifs orc were lenving ws ors The term “ap tcely Coca thers op someting which venta has do wah ohing it being out the ‘ayn which Newman tnever purely ral, bye tctle Berens roe how Cérnne giver the ty fa tcl vain ew precy at ekclngeh bs ie Hi we ba eet Newen a and a part leh bare reroene a Mond makes every mark on his vith tactile values, However large che canva cis not dominating. Its rigor= ously related to human seale. Thus we mentally measure the distances between its verticals in terms of the span of our own reach ~ by etching out our arms in imagination, in judging how far they have tobe stretched oatin order to span thet interval. Again, with, sey, Dey ‘One (1953-52), the narrow tallnes calls our height in question, me sutes our height agains is greater height, makes us perceive through this shorvall our height 2s itis. Yet again, withthe angular canvas, Jercby (1968-60), the relationship of the sloping sides toa single ver- tical band ~ placed as if 10 mirtor our asyinmetry arouses ‘consciousness ofthe relationship of our arms our flanks as we stand upright and suggests rhythmic movement that seems to embexly our breathing. In ways Like this the canvas we are faced with makes us NEWMAN ~ 327 experience a sustained hei “The similar emphatic fromaliy of a Rothko creates a related kind ‘of confrontation. Here we ae faced with highly ambiguous presence which seems, on the one hand, ethereal, empty, om the other solid and ‘imposing, like a megalith. It is a presence that alternates between seeming to be receptive, imimate, enveloping. and seeming to be ‘menacing, repelling, It plays with us as tho weather docs, for i is @ landscape, looming up over us, evoking the clement, recalling the Imagery ofthe first werses of the Book of Genesis - the darkness upon the face ofthe deep, the dividing of the light from the darkness, the creation ofthe firmament, the dividing of the waters from che waters, “Olten, towards nightfall’, Roshko once said to me, ‘there's a Feeling in the air of mystery, threat, frustration ~all f these at once. I would luke my painting to have the quality of such moments.” And of course it does have that quality: it belongs to the great Romantic tradition of sublime landscape. Newman’s art dacs not have to do with man’s f Ings when threatened by something in the air itas to do with man’s sense of himself. The painting gives us a sense of being where we are uwhieh somehow makes us rejoice in being there. Ieheightens, through the intensity of the presence of its verticals, our sense of standing there. Wich its blank surface somehow mysteriously retuening out lance, it confronts us in. a way that reealls confrontation with 2 Giacomect standing figure, that separate presence which mirrors us while it insists upon its separateness from us ~ and thereby sanetfies our separateness. The Firs Station 1058), of The Stations of he Gros is 2 variant on that confrontation. ‘The freely brushed marks surrounding the 24 make this a supreme example of Sandler's stripe like a figure ‘ravaged by space’, but the form adumbrated by those marks also evokes a rmoce specific image ~ that of the Crucifivion, especially asics realised in Cimabe's great Crucifix from Santa Croce, with the figure that Francis Bacon sees as‘a worm crawling down the cross ‘moving, undolating down the cross’ The First Station is aot explicitly said to be a Crucifixion, but the words spoken from the ‘rossare the source of Newnan’s subtitle forthe series, Lema sabi 4tani, and, according to Annalee Newman, that phrase was his first red awareness of what and where we328 AMERICANS choice for the main title, rejected because of a fear that it was too arcane. And pace Lavereace Alloway’s statement in his authoritative catalogue preface that “it would be a serious misreading of the work to consider iin formal terms as a theme and variations’, 3 seems to be rather perverse not to consider it as just that and as a-work which might more fittingly have been entitled Uaraztome on she Cras. The Stations of the Croc: $a ttle appropriated from « traditional iconography which deals with a succession of various events involv- various characters and happening at various places, whereas the series Newman painted consists ofa set of variations which, aceord ing to its appearance and its subtitle, relate to one event involving one protagonist and one place, Whatever the suggestions that may arise im a Newman of the presence of a figure, the essential presence is that of the place in which the beholder feels his own presence. Our participation in a Newman is never the envelopment which a Pollock and a Rothko both create in their different ways; a Newman creates a space in ‘which we feel ourselves fined, but always as separate from the paint- ing. Hess persistently equated this thought of a place where a man stands with the cabbalistic concept of Mako.» Rosenbery riposted that, for Newrman ‘the Kabbalistic “makom”, central as itis in his nception af meaning, is synonymous with such other privileged * places" as dian burial mounds in Ohio and the pitcher's mound at Yankee Stadium." His rejection of his friend's desire ww turn Nowman into a teadivonal Jewish mystic leads Rosenberg ot inte a neat summation of his way’ of thinking: ‘Newman's enthusiasm for Jevsish mystics and their sayings was 4 matter of poetic delight in their eloquent symbolism, as if they were a tribe af Fast Faropean Mallarines co which he could feel hime akin, rather than a matter of religions or philosophical solidarity — a facet of his childlike response to wonders and to illuminating phrases, whatever th source, As with other artists of our ime, Newman's readings and coneepts produced not an organised outlook but a kind of metaphys seal hum that resonates in his paintings and indicates their mental character For Newman’, Rosenberg continues, ‘painting was way of prac cucing the sublime, not of finding symbols for it” Practicing the vEWMA 1 320 sublime saeant making paintings capable ‘of giving someone, as did re, the feeling of his own totality...” And the paintings do indeed make one feel whole. They restore they ince asense of integration, They have the therapeutic action that Matisse said he wanted his work to have, and believed it did have, asin the famous story of how, when he anal Francis Carco were staying at the same hotel and Carco went ddown with flu, Matisse brought in several of his paintings and hung then on the wall before going off for the day.* Matisse's most elaborate attempt to make an art that would heal and exalt was the Chapelle du Rostire at Vence. Standing or seated there in the light ofits coloured windont, we can feel cleansed of dis= quiet and depression, restored to ourselves. But we are not transported into a stratum that has a kind of metaphysical hun’ the imagery is to0 specific, too close to nature. In both of the along the noreh wall the overall shape suguests that of a chasuble streiched put in performance of the liturgy; atthe same time, the repeated rows of repeated shapes within clearly present a series of pairs of parted thighs: itis a nice counterpoint of images of sacred and profane love. But it does not go beyond being an exhilarating play of idealised natural forms; it involves no communion with “the lunknowable’. Newman, on the contrary, does evoke somethi the mystery of being. His imagery, as Tv said, does not give landscape of the frst chapter of the Book of Genesis; his art does give ts the primal onmmand of the Book of Genesis “Inthe beginning the earth was without form, and void... And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.’ Earth could be given form, according to that book, only when there was light. Now, to say that Newman's fields of colour are always emanations of light to speak of some thing he has in common with Matisse and all Matisse’ valid heirs; bur Newman's light has something more, something that provokes thoughts of primondial light. ‘That something is a violence Newman's rip, 28 [sad before, can seem to go clean through us. la French a iis une fermetre clu, ‘a lightning fastener’. The zip in Newman's paintings isa bolt of lightning, with the speed and vio- lence of a revelation of light. That is ee aspect of his evoestion ofthe mystery of being. The other is that intense aveareness of at boxes and here they are which he induces through confronting us with330 AMERICANS perpendicular forms as unspecific and as resonant as the columns of 3 Dorie temple In front of Vir Hevvcus Silimis Le Corbusier's words keep com ing back to mind: ‘Remember the clear, clean, intense, economical, ‘violent Parthenon ~ that ery hurled into a Tandseape made of grace and terror. That monument to strength and purity,” And the searing quality of the white zip frequently brings back another image of a temple:‘And, behold, the veil ofthe temple was ent in rwain from the top to the hoktom . "In checking whether I had remembered the -xording correctly, | rediscovered the wording of the content: ‘Now un te sist how there was darkness overall he land unto the ninth hour. And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with aloud voiee, saying, Es, Eh, lama sabachthans” That to say, My God, my God, wy hast thou forsaken me? . Jesus, when he hadi eried again with a loud voiee, yielded up the ghost. And, behold, the veil of the temple was rene in twain from the top to the bottom . “The sublimity of Newman's at follows From how its order and wholeness include dis- ruption and destruction, and eontain them. the putting where I had only the one symumctica isin the entre of the camnan — nth no stmonphere oF anything that could be conceived ot satura sunosphere~ 1d i 8 em enybirtblay-—-T done pint in ers Sf precinesved stems, and what happened there wir that fd done the pitting a topped oder won ot what Vad dane an Leal Usd Svth that punting fo alow year eying to anderen ¢ Labs that Pd taxes sstemene which we alesng me ard which wos, spp, the Hen ning of my presen Me, becuase from then on I had to give ap any relation to fature,sescen That pana called Onemat | hat mad era that Twas cotomted forthe fs me with the thing chat Tl whereas andl that mee Iwan able to rove msl! fon the at of painting, irom te pining sself-_. The paoting was something that I was mating, sxhoressoomehos for she fs time wt this ining the pang lf had life ots own it a way eat Font hin the hers dis much From a amurvce with Newman by David Sylverser esoeded in New York, Fasier 1965, and eines in Ramet Vezoman Seed Writing and nein, sa. John P, O'Neil, New Vork, Knopf, coy (Cav nos 3-48 1m Brenda Richardson, Burwar Newnan, The Compe racing. 1906-1969, Bakimore Maseum of Ar, 1970 NEWMAN ~ 331 3 "The Fist Man Was an Arc’ Tio’ ys 0,1, New York, Octwber 1997 4: The Sobline s Now, Tiger Ee no. 6, New York December 1948 5 ‘The Problem of Saljeet Mater, wrsten «1044 but unpublished stil Incorporated ny Thomas Hest catalogue introduction tn. Rarwt ‘Newman, New York, Museum of Mover An, 1071, pp. 39-4 6 The Slime New’ 7 Catalogue foreword in The lrgraph:Pasne, Rey Parsns Galley, New York, Jansen 1947 Mes op.o =p. 37 9 Irving Sandler, The Triumph of durian Painung: Hwy of Abstract Esgresininn, New York Washington, Praeger, 1975. 1. to Now York, Dell, soso 11 From the aterm quoted in note «above 13 Bemard Berenson, Flan Painter: of rhe Renae, Book IU, chapter XU 13 Dansd Syrester,Inrsees wt Prac aco, t 075.1 14 Lawrence Alloway, "The Srations ofthe Cros athe Saject of he Artis’, in Burtt Necma: The Suan of the Cro: home stbcban, New York, Goggenheir Mem, «965, p13 Erg. Hem opecita p73 16 Harold Hosenker, Rarmtt Newman, New York, Abrens 1578 p79. 17 bid, pp. 81-3. This andthe previous quaation ae extracted fron ome ing pies which rodsom « generally dsappeinting ext, too such given C0 peenshtckings-of of ents such as Clement Greenberg who recgeised Newman's ques «printer long before Risener cid Hex of course, was anocher Ite convert So ws ths pest writer - ao might hase come to Norman later still without Alex icbermaa’s prompting 18 Frans Caro, ‘Souvenir Atsher:consertion sree Mats’, Dic Kant Zain, Aros. 8.1988 19 Statement in La Chapelle da Rosie des Dominicans de Vence, 1951 20, Trandate thas in Peter Bla, Le Corer ices and Form, Maryland 16 p24 24 Mathew 25: 45-6, 50-4 utharied Version)